Ask them, and they'll most likely tell you: Because she's a moron. But that is obviously false. To be sure, her skills at extemporaneous speaking leave much to be desired. But that can be said of a good many politicians on both sides of the aisle, including George W. Bush, John Kerry and, yes, Barack Obama. And don't get us started on the man who defeated her for the vice presidency.

Whether or not she is presidential timber--and we are inclined to think that she is not--there is no denying that she is a highly accomplished person. She is also a highly accomplished woman, what in an earlier age would have been called a feminist pioneer: the first female governor of the malest state in the country, the first woman on the presidential ticket of the party on the male side of the "gender gap." Having left politics, whether temporarily or permanently, she has established herself as one of the most consequential voices in the political media.

They say she is uneducated. What they mean is that her education is not elite--not Harvard or Yale, or even Michigan or UCLA. They resent her because, in their view, she has risen above her station.

In this respect we identify fully with Palin, for we have been on the receiving end of similar disdain. Our education, like Sarah Palin's, consisted of too many years at inferior state universities, although unlike her, we never even got around to graduating. The other day Paul Reidlinger took a shot at us for featuring one of his restaurant reviews under our "Wannabe Pundits" heading last month: "I was even denounced by noted high school graduate James Taranto." (For the record, our high school diploma is a GED.)

"Denounced" is far too strong a word; "mocked" is more like it. Reidlinger writes for San Francisco Bay Guardian, whatever that is. He doesn't say, but we surmise that he possesses advanced degrees from Stanford or the University of California, both very fine institutions. He observes that "it is a writer's job to afflict the comfortable and complacent." That would be an insufferably pretentious way to describe our job as a political columnist for an elite newspaper. What is a restaurant critic going to "afflict the comfortable" with? Food poisoning?

Professional jealousy and intellectual snobbery, however, only scratch the surface of the left's bizarre attitude toward Palin. They explain the intensity of the disdain, but not the outright hatred--not why some people whose grasp of reality is sufficient to function in society made the insane inference that she was to blame for a madman's attempt to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

This unhinged hatred of Palin comes mostly from women. That is an awkward observation for us to offer, because a man risks sounding sexist or unchivalrous when he makes unflattering generalizations about women. Therefore, we are going to hide behind the skirts of our friend Jessica Faller, a New Yorker in her 30s of generally liberal politics. Over the weekend, she wrote us this analysis of Palin-hatred, which she has generously given us permission to quote:

I am starting out with a guess that this stems from her abrupt appearance on the national scene during the McCain-Obama race. She appeared out of nowhere and landed squarely in a position of extreme attention and media power. Her sex appeal might not have been as much of an issue had she been a known entity with a tremendous, watertight political résumé.
Even lacking that, her sex appeal might not have been such an issue if her demeanor on the campaign trail had been more, well, conservative. But here is this comely woman, in a curvy red suit, giving "shout-outs" during the debate with Joe Biden, giving controversial interviews without apology, basically driving in there, parking the car, and walking in like she owned the place.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But she couldn't have pulled it off if she were a gray mouse in a pantsuit, and because the devil in the red dress wasn't orating like a professor, it roused an unquenchable forest fire of rage and loathing in the breasts of many women, perhaps of the toiling gray mouse variety, who projected onto her their own career resentments and personal frustrations.

I am amazed at how people still abhor her. I personally do not. I don't feel she would be a good choice to run this country, but she does not deserve the horrific treatment she gets. I can tell you, being privy to the endless, incendiary rants this past week about her, coming from hordes of liberal women--age demo 25 to 45--they rip her to pieces, they blame her for everything, and the jealousy/resentment factor is so clear and primal. I've never seen anything like it.
We'd say this goes beyond mere jealousy. For many liberal women, Palin threatens their sexual identity, which is bound up with their politics in a way that it is not for any other group (possibly excepting gays, though that is unrelated to today's topic).

An important strand of contemporary liberalism is feminism. As a label, "feminist" is passé; outside the academic fever swamps, you will find few women below Social Security age who embrace it.

That is because what used to be called feminism--the proposition that women deserve equality before the law and protection from discrimination--is almost universally accepted today. Politically speaking, a woman is the equal of a man. No woman in public life better symbolizes this than Sarah Palin--especially not Hillary Clinton, the left's favorite icon. No one can deny Mrs. Clinton's accomplishments, but neither can one escape crediting them in substantial part to her role as the wife of a powerful man.

But there is more to feminism than political and legal equality. Men and women are intrinsically unequal in ways that are ultimately beyond the power of government to remediate. That is because nature is unfair. Sexual reproduction is far more demanding, both physically and temporally, for women than for men. Men simply do not face the sort of children-or-career conundrums that vex women in an era of workplace equality.

Except for the small minority of women with no interest in having children, this is an inescapable problem, one that cannot be obviated by political means. Aspects of it can, however, be ameliorated by technology--most notably contraception, which at least gives women considerable control over the timing of reproduction.

As a political matter, contraception is essentially uncontroversial today, which is to say that any suggestion that adult women be legally prevented from using birth control is outside the realm of serious debate. The same cannot be said of abortion, and that is at the root of Palinoia.

To the extent that "feminism" remains controversial, it is because of the position it takes on abortion: not just that a woman should have the "right to choose," but that this is a matter over which reasonable people cannot disagree--that to favor any limitations on the right to abortion, or even to acknowledge that abortion is morally problematic, is to deny the basic dignity of women.

To a woman who has internalized this point of view, Sarah Palin's opposition to abortion rights is a personal affront, and a deep one. It doesn't help that Palin lives by her beliefs. To the contrary, it intensifies the offense.

It used to be a trope for liberal interviewers to try to unmask hypocrisy by asking antiabortion politicians--male ones, of course--what they would do if their single teen daughters got pregnant. It's a rude question, but Palin, whose 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy coincided with Mom's introduction to the nation, answered it in real life.

Recently we were at a party where a woman in her 60s, a self-described feminist, called Palin a "moron" for having encouraged her daughter to carry her child to term and "to marry the sperm donor." Even apart from the gross language, this was a completely irrational thing to say. First, that Palin's values are different in no way reflects on her intelligence.

More important, why is Bristol Palin's decision to carry her child to term any of this lady's business? Those who claim to be champions of privacy and choice need to do some serious soul-searching if they have so much trouble tolerating the private choices of others.

What about male Palin-hatred? It seems to us that it is of decidedly secondary importance. Liberal men put down Palin as a cheap way to score points with the women in their lives, or they use her as an outlet for more-general misogynistic impulses that would otherwise be socially unacceptable to express.

Liberal women are the active, driving force behind hatred of Sarah Palin, while liberal men's behavior is passive and manipulative. In this respect, feminism has succeeded in reversing the traditional sexual stereotypes. If this is the result, you have to wonder why anyone would have bothered.

It comes down to this--- what percentage of the people who voted for B.O. in 2008, are going to vote for him again in 2012? It doesn't matter who his opponent is, he has to run against his record, and his record sucks.

Bush's wasn't all that in 2004, but the Democrats fielded a weak candidate who fumbled too much.

And in 1994, if you had asked what the re-election chances were of one William Jefferson Clinton, you would've been told they were close to zero, as the Republicans and their Contract with America had swept to power. But the Republicans fumbled badly, and Dole was a weak candidate.

So you can say BO is a dead duck if you want, but his excellent speaking skills are tough to match, and the Republicans need to field a strong candidate or they too may re-learn what history has to teach.

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"I love signature blocks on the Internet. I get to put whatever the hell I want in quotes, pick a pretend author, and bang, it's like he really said it." George Washington

Well said! Rep. However you are wrong about your vote not mattering. I don't look at it as a right for me anymore, but an obligation, regardless of the predetermined outcome. No matter how small the local elections might be, I get out and vote. It gives me the right to b!tch!!!!

I always vote unless something very unusual arises. But as a practical matter, I don't think Massachusetts has voted for a Republican for President since Ike or something.

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"I love signature blocks on the Internet. I get to put whatever the hell I want in quotes, pick a pretend author, and bang, it's like he really said it." George Washington

After Tucson, there was an easy comparison to be made. On one hand was Palin's video defense. On the other hand was Obama's speech. A week after, Obama's approval rating shot up to a height that he hadn't enjoyed for a long while. The difference is profound. The country saw what made Obama different, what made people flock to him in the waning days of the Bush era. Palin's offering is stale, unsophisticated, flat.

She wouldn't go away if the left and the press ignored her. That's really just a stupid comment divorced from reality. She has a huge fanbase. She tours the country, signing books and speaking for causes. She puts up videos of herself, she tweets and has a lot of followers that want her to tweet. She had a very successful tv show. Her daughter was on a hugely succesful tv show.

Don't give me this bullshit about how she doesn't want the spotlight. She does want the spotlight. That's exactly why she abandoned her position as Governor of Alaska -- it was precisely because she wanted to raise awareness and rally the troops. She played a large part in the November elections. She craved that part.

You're either lying or being ignorant.

How do you think Obama would have fared if the primary target of the assassination had been a Republican and if a hostile media had run with the theory that Barack Obama's rhetoric had somehow caused the violence? I don't think he would have fared too well because he's extremely thin skinned. He had the advantage in this case that he wasn't forced to speak from the defensive like Palin. All in all though, I thought Palin's commentary was superior to Obama's hollow words.

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"I'll see you guys in New York." ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to US military personnel upon his release from US custody at Camp Bucca in Iraq during Obama's first year in office.

Like "corpsman" is either a commonly used word, or one that is obviously easily correctly pronounced.

You fellows on the right get far more mileage out of this one gaffe than any one of Bush's dozens, that's for sure. Oh right, because you don't have dozens to choose from like we did.

He's had a lot of them.

Quote:

A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States
by Sarah Palin on Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 4:38pm
My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.

Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? (And for that matter, why not just make up stories out of thin air – like the totally false hard news story which has run for three days now reporting that I lobbied the producers of “Dancing with the Stars” to cast a former Senate candidate on their show. That lie is further clear proof that the media completely makes things up without doing even rudimentary fact-checking.)

“Hope springs eternal” as the poet says. Let’s hope that perhaps, just maybe, they might get it right next time. When we the people are effective in holding America’s free press accountable for responsible and truthful reporting, then we shall all have even more to be thankful for!

Palin is exactly like John Edwards except that the grand jury investigating Edwards is more likely hearing about a better investigation about how he might have paid off the love child's mom to keep quiet with campaign money compared to the investigation into how Palin harrassed her sister's ex-husband state trooper by abusing her governor's position.

So your current sig is an explanation by a conservative social commentator as to why Obama's really just as unpopular as Bush was, even though his unpopularity rating is much lower?

Doesn't seem all that insightful to me. The reality is that memories fade, and anger abates, and people just forget how much they loathed Bush. The economic crisis of 2008-2010 is much more real to everyone than whateveritwasthatBushdidbackthen, and Obama obviously gets much derision heaped his way for the economic malaise (whether deserved or not).

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"I love signature blocks on the Internet. I get to put whatever the hell I want in quotes, pick a pretend author, and bang, it's like he really said it." George Washington

We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

How do you think Obama would have fared if the primary target of the assassination had been a Republican and if a hostile media had run with the theory that Barack Obama's rhetoric had somehow caused the violence? I don't think he would have fared too well because he's extremely thin skinned. He had the advantage in this case that he wasn't forced to speak from the defensive like Palin. All in all though, I thought Palin's commentary was superior to Obama's hollow words.

I have seen several Republican PR people wonder why she even spoke. She was vindicated in all of this and she never had to lift a finger others did it for her.